Maggie dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back to her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of the past.When she had ended, Dr Kenn was silent for some minutes: there was a difficulty on his mind.He rose and walked up and down the hearth with his hands behind him.At last, he seated himself again, and said, looking at Maggie, `Your prompting to go to your nearest friends - to remain where all the ties of your life have been formed - is a true prompting, to which the Church in its original constitution and discipline responds - opening its arms to the penitent - watching over its children to the last - never abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate.And the Church ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that every parish should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood under a spiritual father.
But the ideas of discipline and Christian fraternity are entirely relaxed - they can hardly be said to exist in the public mind: they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory form they have taken in the narrow communities of schismatics; and if I were not supported by the firm faith that the Church must ultimately recover the full force of that constitution which is alone fitted to human needs, I should often lose heart at observing the want of fellowship and sense of mutual responsibility among my own flock.At present everything seems tending towards the relaxation of ties - towards the substitution of wayward choice for the adherence to obligation which has its roots in the past.Your conscience and your heart have given you true light on this point, Miss Tulliver; and I have said all this that you may know what my wish about you - what my advice to you - would be if they sprang from my own feeling and opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances.'
Dr Kenn paused a little while.There was an entire absence of effusive benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in the gravity of his look and voice.If Maggie had not known that his benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might have been chilled and frightened.As it was, she listened expectantly, quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words.He went on.
`Your inexperience of the world, Miss Tulliver, prevents you from anticipating fully, the very unjust conceptions that will probably be formed concerning your conduct - conceptions which will have a baneful effect even in spite of known evidence to disprove them.'
`O, I do - I begin to see,' said Maggie, unable to repress this utterance of her recent pain.`I know I shall be insulted - I shall be thought worse than I am.'
`You perhaps do not yet know,' said Dr Kenn, with a touch of more personal pity, `that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult path of a return to the right at the moment when that return was most of all difficult.'
`Oh - where is he?' said poor Maggie, with a flush and tremor, that no presence could have hindered.
`He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father.
He has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of that letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her.'
Dr Kenn waited for her to get calm again before he went on.
`That letter, as I said, ought to suffice you to prevent false impressions concerning you.But I am bound to tell you, Miss Tulliver, that not only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which will save you from the painful effect of false imputations.The persons who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as yours, are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you on the ground of an unjust judgment;because they will not believe in your struggle.I fear your life here will be attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions.For this reason - and for this only - I ask you to consider whether it will not perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance, according to your former intention.I will exert myself at once to obtain one for you.'